What if one guy was two superheroes? ALTER EGO is the story of the smiling champion WHIZ-BANG, the prowling vigilante THE BLACK DOG, and the man behind both of their masks. This weekly newsletter is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Alter Ego, by Nate Cosby, Jacob Edgar, Kike J. Diaz & Rus Wooton.
PART III: The Making Of A Man, Continued
Welcome back! Hope errbody had a swell turkey time last week, if that’s what you’re into (I had chickpeas). In this bit, we’re continuing with our looooooooong journey to Whiz-Bang’s costume and persona. Between last week’s designs and today’s, you’ll see that Jacob did well over twenty versions (he wanted to, I promise) as we scritched and scratched and explored our influences and preferences for what our daytime hero should be.
You’ll also notice midway through the process that Whiz-Bang goes from being a Gene Kelly lookalike to a Black man. That change (and many others) came about organically, as we were developing the premise and filling in the details of Alter Ego’s world. As Jacob worked on the costumes, I was working on our main character’s backstory, his speaking cadence, how he saw the world, why he has powers, what would make him want to move to Hollywood, when he decided to become a superhero, then when he decided to double-up on the hero bit, and how he could (or couldn’t) keep all three of his personas going simultaneously.
I started by rewatching Gene Kelly flicks (particularly the ones he co-directed with Stanley Donen), and was still inspired by Kelly’s physicality, his grace and strength and energy. But something about Kelly’s acting style wasn’t quite matching up with every version of our character, it wasn’t singing. So I dug into the trusty WATCH TCM app, searching for another motivating actor. And I got to one of my all-time favorite movies, In The Heat Of The Night, starring one of my favorite actors, the great, great, GREAT, SUPER-GREAT Sidney Poitier.
There’s just no one cooler than Sidney Poitier. He commands every scene he’s in, even when he’s completely still and silent. And there’s something in his swagger, his confidence in knowing that everyone can be looking at him, and feeling that that’s correct, felt totally right for all three versions of our guy.
I’ll let Jacob take it from here…see ya next week!
—Nate
Jacob here! Popping in to give a little color to the design process for our boy, Whiz-Bang. We’ve already shown a couple of the early designs, now we’re at the point where we narrowed our idea of him a little bit. We’ve decided to draw on Gene Kelly as a starting point for his attitude and the way he moves. And Nate was also pushing for something along the lines of the classic Alan Scott Green Lantern. Particularly the loose fabric shirt and the big buckled belt. We tried a lot of different things, as you’ll see, before we settled on the final version.
My goal starting out was to get to something that had a clean iconography. When you look at the great superhero costumes, the ones that really last (Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, etc) they tend to not be very “busy.” There’s a reason Superman’s classic duds returned and the New 52 suit was retired. Not to put down that design or anything, but something like that isn’t as instantly recognizable as Superman. The Superman we all have in our heads. Doesn’t have the same spirit and magic. Sure the S is there, the red cape, but if your grandma saw that she’d say “Huh? What do I care what Superman looks like?” Hmm. Anyway…
What you’ll see is a lot of fine-tuning as we drilled down to something that we felt had a classic and iconic feel. I hoped that Whiz-Bang would look like a character who has endured since the 40s, even though we’re making him now.
It was at this point that we asked ourselves, “What if we crossed Gene Kelly with Sidney Poitier?”
We’d end up with this handsome fella.
So then another few fussy tests with mustaches and masks…
And finally, we had our winner. May we present, WHIZ-BANG.
NEXT WEEK: The Black Dog!